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Friday, 1 December 2017

Harkaway Quarry - September 1988

These are photos of the Harkaway Quarry, on Noack Road, taken in September 1988. The quarry was a basalt mine (or bluestone mine - apparently Victorians call basalt bluestone) and was operated by Pioneer. Pioneer was taken over by Hanson in 2000 and the business was then rebranded. This area was home to many quarries - the most well known is Wilson Quarry at Berwick. You can see aerial photographs of some of the other quarries here.

As well as basalt other minerals have also been found at Harkaway and the neighbouring Narre Warren quarry. The Australian & New Zealand Micromineral News, Issue 9, June 2014 has an interesting article Minerals from the Narre Warren & Harkaway quarries by John Haupt and he writes -

The Harkaway quarry was located in Noack road, Harkaway and was noted for the specimens of fluorapophyllite, now known as fluorapophyllite-(K), the only occurrence found in the Victorian basalts. It occurred as a druse of small equant crystals lining cavities up to 15cm across in the basalt. Natrolite, phillipsite and calcite occur with the apophyllite. The apophyllite was found in a small zone in fragmented basalt, 5 metres across and 10 metres high in the quarry and was quickly quarried out (Birch et al 1984). Calcite crystallised later than natrolite, forming attractive micros of calcite ‘teardrops’ on natrolite crystals.

My knowledge of minerals is very sketchy, so I can't help with an explanation, however you can read Mr Haupt's article in full here.

The Quarry ceased operation at the end of 2009 or January 2010 - I have seen two dates listed. The January 2010 date comes from a blog, called 'Welcome to the house of Murray' written by Jo Murray, who used to work at the Quarry. You can see some photos and read an account of her last day at work here. The site is currently unused and fenced off. There is a push from some locals to turn the quarry into a park.

Breaking up the bluestone with a hydraulic hammer

Loading on to a truck

Another view of the loading process

A loaded truck going up, an unloaded truck going down

Unloading into the crusher plant

Another view of the quarry showing, what I presume is, the crushing plant

A view of the quarry. Easy to see why basalt is called bluestone when you look at the stratas at the top left of the photo.

This is the Harkaway Quarry, photo taken April 20, 1978. The A'Beckett Road quarry is top left.